He was back exactly as he had been when he had first joined the frigate under Pomfret, except that the new captain, Bolitho, was another kind of person entirely.
He jerked from hiss thoughts as Maynard called breathlessly, `Sir! One of the men is signalling from the hillside!'
Vibart drew his sword and slashed sharply at a small bush. `So the captain guessed right, did he?' He waved his arm in a half circle. `Right, you men! Get to either side of the road and wait for Mr. Farquhar's party to work round behind them. I don't want anyone to escape!' He saw the men nod and shuffle to the bushes, swinging their clubs and readjusting their cutlass belts.
When the moment of contact actually came, even Vibart was taken off guard.
It was more like a carefree procession than a party of men avoiding the press gangs. Some fifty or more men tightly bunched on the narrow track, talking, some even singing as they strolled aimlessly away from Falmouth and the sea.
Vibart saw Farquhar's slim silhouette break the skyline and stepped out from the bushes. His appearance could not have affected them more deeply had he been something from another world. He held up his sword as his men stepped out across the road behind him.
`In the King's name! I charge you all to line up and be examined!' His voice broke the spell. Some of the men turned and tried to run back along the road, only to halt gasping 'at the sight of Farquhar's men and the levelled muskets. One figure bolted up the hillside, his feet kicking the grass like some terrified rabbit.
Josling, a bosun's mate, lashed out with his cudgel. The man screamed and rolled down the slope and lay in a puddle clutching his shin. Josling turned him over with his foot and felt the man's bleeding leg. Then he looked at Vibart and said offhandedly, `No eggs broken, sir!'
Shocked and dazed the men allowed themselves to be pushed into line on the road. Vibart stood watching and calculating. It had been so easy that he wanted to grin.
Brock said, `Fifty-two men, sir. All sound in wind and limb!'
One of the uneven rank dropped on to his knees and whimpered, `Please, please, sir! Not me!'
There were tears on his cheeks, and Vibart asked harshly, `What is so special about you?’
'My wife, sir! She's ill! She needs me at home!' He rocked on his knees. "She'll die without my support, sir, in God's name she will!'
Vibart said wearily, `Stand that man on his feet. He makes me sick!'
Another at the end of the rank said in a tight voice, `I am a shepherd, I'm excused from the press!' He stared round challengingly until his eye fell on Brock. `Ask him, sir. The gunner will bear me out!'
Brock sauntered across to him and held up his cane. `Roll up your sleeve.' He sounded bored, even indifferent, and several of the watching men forgot their shocked misery to lean from the rank-and watch.
The man in question took a half-pace away, but not quickly enough. Like a steel claw Brock's hand fastened on his rough shirt and tore it from his arm to display an interwoven tattoo of crossed flags and cannon.
Brock stepped back and swayed on his heels. He looked along the rank. `No man has a tattoo like that unless he is a seaman.' His voice was slow and patient, like a schoolmaster with a new class. `No man would recognise me as a gunner unless he had served in a King'ss ship!'
Without warning his cane flashed in the weak sunlight. When it returned to his side the other man had blood on his face where it had cut almost to, the bone.
The gunner looked at him levelly. `Most of all, I dislike being taken for a fool!' He turned his back, dismissing the man from his mind.
A seaman yelled, `Another signal, sir! One more group comin' down the road!'
Vibart sheathed his sword. `Very well.' He looked coldly at the shivering line of men. `You are entering an honourable service. You have just learned the first lesson. Don't make me teach you another!'
Maynard fell into step beside him his face troubled. `It seems a pity that there is no other way, sir?'
Vibart did not reply. Like the man who had begged for his wife, such statements lacked both purpose and meaning.
Only aboard the ship did anything count for any of them.
Bolitho sipped at his port and waited until the servant girl had cleared away the table. His stomach had long grown used to meagre and poorly cooked shipboard food, so that the excellent meal of good Cornish lamb left him feeling glutted and uncomfortable.
Across the table his father, James Bolitho, drummed impatiently on the polished wood with his one remaining hand and then took a long swallow of port. He seemed ill at ease, even nervous, as he had been from the moment of his son's arrival.
Bolitho watched him quietly and waited. There was such a change in his father. From his own boyhood dayss to the present time Bolitho had seen his father only on rarely spaced occasions when he had returned here to the family home. From foreign wars and far-off countries, from exploits which children could only guess at. He could remember him as tall and grave in his naval uniform, shedding his service selfdiscipline like a cloak as he had come through that familiar doorway beside the portraits of the Bolitho family. Men like himself, like his son, sailors first and foremost.
When Bolitho had been a midshipman under Sir Henry Langford he had learned of his father's wounds whilst he had been engaged in fighting for the fast-advancing colonies in India, and when he had seen him again he had found him suddenly old and embittered. He had been a man of boundless energy and ideas, and to be removed from the Navy List, no matter how honourably, was more than the loss of an arm, it was like having his life cut from within him.
Locally in Falmouth he was respected as a firm and just magistrate, but Bolitho knew in his heart that his father's very being still lay with the sea, and the ships which came and went on the tide. Even his old friends and comrades had stopped coming to visit him, perhaps unable to bear what their very presence represented. Interest changed so easily into envy. Contact could harm rather than soothe.
Bolitho had a brother and two sisters. The latter had now both married, one to a farmer, the other to an officer of the garrison. Of Hugh, his older brother, nothing had yet been said, and Bolitho made himself wait for what he guessed was uppermost in his father's mind.
`I watched your ship come in, Richard.' The hand drummed busily on the table. `She's a fine vessel, and when you get to- the West Indies again I have no doubt you will bring more honour to the family.' He shook his head sadly. `England needs all her sons now. It seems as if the world must be our enemy before we can find the, right solution.'
It was very quiet in, the house. After the pitch of a deck, the creak of spars, it was like another world. Even the smells were different. The packed humanity, and the varied aromas of tar and salt, of cooking and damp, all were alien here.
It felt lonely, too. In his, mind's eye he could still picture his mother, young and vivacious as he remembered her. Again, he had been at sea when she had died of some brief but final illness. Now there was no companion for James Bolitho, and nobody to sit enraptured or amused by stories of the family's past. exploits.
Bolitho glanced at the great clock. `My men will have found new poeple for the crew by now or not at all,' he said quietly. `It is a sad necessity that we have to get seamen like this.'
His father's face came alive from his inner thoughts. `I believe that their duty is more important than their passing comfort! Every week I have to sign deportation orders for the colonies, or hang useless thieves. Life in a King's ship would have spared them the indignity of life ashore, would have saved them from petty greed and temptation!'
Bolitho studied his father's face and remembered himself as he had appeared in the mirror of the George Inn at Portsmouth. It was there in his father, as it was in the portraits along the walls. The same calm face and dark hair, the same slightly hooked nose. But his father had lost his old fire, and his hair was grey now, like that of a man much older.
His father stood up and walked to the fire. Over his shoulder he said gruffly, `You have not yet heard about your brother?'
Bolitho tensed. `No. I thought he was still at sea.'
`At sea?' The older man shook his head vaguely. `Of course, I kept it from you. I suppose I should have written to you, but in my heart I still hoped he might change his ways and nobody would have known about it."
Bolitho waited. His brother had always been the apple of his father's eye. When last he had seen him he had been a lieutenant in the Channel Fleet, the next in line for this house and for the family inheritance. Bolitho had never felt particularly close to Hugh, but put it down to a natural family jealousy. Now, he was not so sure.
`I had great hopes for Hugh.' His father was talking to the fire. To himself. `I am only glad his mother is not alive to know of what he became!'
`Is there something I can do?' Bolitho watched the shoulders quiver as his father sought to control his voice.
`Nothing. Hugh is no longer in the Navy. He got into debt gambling. He always had an eye for the tables, as I think you know. But he got into deep trouble, and to end it all he fought a duel with a brother officer, and killed him!'
Bolitho's mind began to clear. That explained the few servants, and the fact that over half the land belonging to the house had been sold to a local farmer.
`You covered his debts then?' He kept his voice calm. `I have some prize money if…'
The other man held up his hand. `That is not necessary. It was my fault for being so blind. I was stupid about that boy. I must pay for my misjudgement!' He seemed to become more weary. `He deserted the Navy, turned his back on it, even knowing how his act would hurt me. Now he has gone.'
Bolitho started. `Gone?’
'He went to America. I have not heard of him for two years, nor do I want to.' When he turned Bolitho saw the lie shining in his eyes. `Not content with bringing disgrace on the family name, he has done this thing. Betrayed his country!'
Bolitho thought of the chaos and death at the disaster of Philadelphia and answered slowly, `He may have been prevented from returning by the rebellion.'
`You know your brother, Richard. Do you really think it likely? He always had to be right, to hold the winning cards. No, I cannot see him pining away in a prison camp!'
The servant girl entered the room and bobbed in a clumsy curtsy. 'Beggin' pardon, zur. There's an officer to zee you.'
`That'll be Herrick, my third lieutenant,' said Bolitho hurriedly. `I asked him to take a glass with us. I'll tell him to go if you wish?'
His father stood up straight and flicked his coat into position again. `No, boy. Have him come in. I will not let my shame interfere with the real pride I have in my remaining son.’
Bolitho said gently, 'I am very sorry, Father. You must know that.'
`Thank you. Yes, I do know. And you were the one I thought would never make your way in the Navy. You were always the dreamer, the unpredictable one. I am afraid I neglected you for Hugh.' He sighed. `Now it is too late.' There was a step in the hallway and he said yvith sudden urgency, 'In case I never see you again, my boy, there is something you must have.' He swallowed. `I wanted Hugh to have it when he became a captain.' He reached into a cupboard and held out his sword. It was old and well tarnished, but Bolitho knew it was of greater value than steel and gilt.
He hesitated. `Your father's sword. You always wore it!'
James Bolitho nodded and turned it over carefully in his hands. `Yes, I always wore it. It was a good friend.' He held it out. `Take it. I want you to wear it for me!'
His father suddenly smiled. `Well then, let us greet your junior officer together, eh?'
When Herrick walked uncertainly into the wide room he saw only his smiling host and his new captain, one the living mould of the other.
Only Bolitho saw the pain in his father's eyes and was deeply moved.
It was strange how he had come to the house, as he had always done in the past, seeking comfort and advice. Yet he had mentioned nothing about the difficulties and danger of his new command, or the double-edged responsibility which hung over his head like an axe.
For once, he had been the one who was needed, and he was ashamed because he did not know the answer.
At dawn the following day the frigate Phalarope unfurled her sails and broke out her anchor. There were no cheers to speed her parting, but there were many tears and curses from the women and old men who watched from the jetties.
The air was keen and fresh, and as the yards creaked round and the ship heeled away from the land Bolitho stood aft by the taffrail, his glass moving slowly across the green sloping hills and the huddled town below.
He had his ship, and all but a full complement. With time the new men would soon be moulded into sailors, and given patience and understanding they might make their country proud of them.
St. Anthony's Light moved astern, the ancient beacon which was the returning sailor's first sight of home. Bolitho wondered when or if he would see it again. He thought too of his father, alone in the old house, alone with his memories and shattered hopes. He thought of the sword and all that it represented.
He turned away from the rail and stared down at one of the ship's boys, a mere infant of about twelve years old. The boy was weeping uncontrollably and waving vaguely at the land as it cruised away into the haze. Bolitho asked, `Do you know that I was your age when I first went to sea, boy?'
The lad rubbed his nose with a grubby fist and gazed at the captain with something like wonder.
Bolitho added, `You'll see England again. Never you fear!' He turned away quickly lest the boy should see the uncertainty in his eye.
By the wheel old Proby intoned, `South-west by South. Full and by, quartermaster.'
Then, as if to cut short the agony of sailing, he walked to the lee rail and spat into the sea.
3. BEEF FOR THE PURSER
Twenty days after weighing anchor the frigate Phalarope crossed the thirtieth parallel and heeled sickeningly to a blustering north-west gale. Falmouth lay three thousand miles astern, but the' wind with all its tricks and conning cruelties stayed resolutely with the ship.
As one bell struck briefly from the forecastle and the dull copper sun moved towards the horizon the frigate ploughed across each successive bank of white-crested rollers with neither care nor concern for the men who served her day by day, hour by hour. No sooner was one watch dismissed below than the boatswain's mates would run from hatch to hatch, their calls twittering, their voices hoarse in the thunder of canvas and the never ending hiss of spray.
`All hands! All hands! Shorten sail!'
Later, stiff and dazed from their dizzy climb aloft, the seamen would creep below, their bodies aching, their fingers stiff and bleeding from their fight with the rebellious canvas.
Now, the men off watch crouched in the semi-darkness of the berth deck groping for handholds and listening to the crash of water against the hull even as they tried to finish their evening meal. From the deck beams the swinging lanterns threw strange shadows across their bowed heads, picking out individual faces and actions like scenes from a partially cleaned oil painting.
Below the sealed hatches the air was thick with smells. That of bilge water mixing with sweat and the sour odour of seasickness, and the whole area was filled with sound as the ship fought her own battle with the Atlantic. The steady crash of waves followed by the jubilant surge of water along the deck above, the continuous groaning of timbers and the humming of taut stays, all defied the men to sleep and relax even for a moment.
John Allday sat astride one of the long, scrubbed benches and gnawed carefully at a tough piece of salt beef. Between his strong teeth it felt like leather, but he made himself eat it, and closed his mind to the rancid cask from which it had come. The deep cut on his cheek where Brock's cane had found its mark had healed in an ugly scar, and as his jaws moved steadily on the meat he could feel the skin tightening painfully where blown salt and cold winds had drawn the edges together like crude stitching.
Across the table, and watching him with an unwinking stare, sat Pochin, a giant seaman with shoulders like a cliff. He said at last, `You've settled in right enough, mate.' He smiled bleakly. `All that squit when you was pressed came to nothin'!'
Allday threw a meat bone on to his tin plate and wiped his fingers on a piece of hemp. He regarded the other man with his steady, calm eyes for several seconds and then replied, `I can wait.'
Pochin glared through the gloom, his head cocked to listen to some of the men retching. ` Lot of bloody women!' -He looked back at Allday. `I was forgettin', you are an old hand at this:
Allday shrugged and looked down at his palms. `You never get rid of the tar, do you?' He leaned back against the timbers and sighed. `My last ship was the Resolution, seventy-four. I was a foretopman.' He allowed his eyes to close. `A good enough ship. We paid off just a few months before the American Revolution, and I was clean away before the press could lay a finger on me!'
An old, grey-haired man with washed-out blue eyes• said huskily, `Was you really a shepherd like you told 'em?'
Allday nodded. `That, and other things. I had to stay out in the open. To keep away from the towns. I would choke to death under a roof!' He gave a small smile. `Just an occasional run into Falmouth was enough for me. Just enough for a woman, and a glass or two!'
The old seaman, Strachan, pursed his lips and rocked against the table as the ship heeled steeply and sent the plates skittering across the deck. `It sounds like a fair life, mate.' He seemed neither wistful nor envious. It was just a statement. Old Ben Strachan had been in the Navy for forty years, since he had first trod deck as a powder-monkey. Life ashore was a mystery to him, and in his regimented world appeared even more dangerous than the privations afloat.
Allday looked round as a hunched figure rose over the table's edge and threw himself across his arms amongst the litter of food. Bryan Ferguson had been in a continuous torment of seasickness and fear from the very moment Vibart's figure had appeared on that coast road. In Falmouth he had been a clerk working at a local boatyard. Physically he was not a strong man, and now in the swinging lantern's feeble light his face looked as gray as death itself.
His thin body was bruised in many places, both from falling against unfamiliar shipboard objects and not least from the angry canes of the bosun's mates and petty officers as the latter sought to drive the new men into the mysteries of seamanship and sail drill.
Day after day it had continued. Harried and chased -from one part of the ship to the next with neither let-up nor mercy. Quivering with terror Ferguson had dragged his way up the swooping shrouds and out along the yards, until he could see the creaming water leaping below him as if to claw at his very feet. The first time he had clung sobbing to the mast, incapable of either moving out along the yard or even down towards the safety of the deck.
Josling, a bosun's mate, had screamed up at him, `Move out, you bugger, or I'll have the hide off you!'
At that particular moment Ferguson 's tortured mind had almost broken. With each eager thrust of the frigate's stem, and with every passing hour, Ferguson 's home fell further and further astern. And with it went his wife, sinking into the wave-tossed distance like a memory.
Over and over again he had pictured her pale, anxious face as he had last seen her. When the Phalarope had been sighted heading for Falmouth Bay most of the young townsmen had headed for the hills. Ferguson 's wife had been ill for three years, and he had seen her get more frail and delicate, and on that day she had been more than unwell and he had begged to stay with her. But gravely she had insisted.
`You go with the others, Bryan. I'll be all right. And I'm not wanting the press to find you here!'
The nightmare became worse when he considered that if he had stayed with her he would still be safe and able to protect and help her.
Allday saidd quietly, `Here, take some food.' He pushed a plate of dark meat across the boards. `You've not eaten for days, man.'
Ferguson dragged his head from his forearms and stared glassily at the relaxed looking seaman. Unbeknown to Allday, Ferguson had almost jumped from the swaying mainyard rather than face another hour of torture. But Allday had rown inboard along the yard, his feet splayed and balanced, one hand held out towards the gasping Ferguson. `Here, mate! Just follow me an' don't look down.' There had been a quiet force in his. tone, like that of a man who expected to be obeyed. He had added harshly, `Don't give that bugger Josling a chance to beat you. The bastard enjoys making you jump!'
He stared now at the man's dark features, at the scar on his cheek, and at his calm, level eyes. Allday had been accepted immediately by the frigate's seamen, whereas the other newly pressed men were still kept at arm's length, as if on trial, until their merits or shortcomings could be properly measured. Perhaps it was because Allday was already hardened to a life at sea. Or maybe it came from the fact he never showed his bitterness at being pressed, or boasted about his life ashore like some of the others.
Ferguson swallowed hard to bite back the rising nausea. `I can't eat it!' He peered wretchedly at the meat. `It's swill!'
Allday grinned. `You'll get used to it!'
Pochin sneered. `You make me spew! I suppose you used to take your wife up to the 'eadland and go moist-eyed at the sight of a King's ship! I'll bet you used to feel so holy, so almighty proud as the ships sailed safely past!'
Ferguson stared at the man's angry face, mesmerised by his hate.
Pochin glared across the canting deck where the other crowded` seamen had fallen silent at his outburst. `You never had a thought for the poor buggers who manned 'em, nor what they was doin'!' He turned back to Ferguson with sud,den malice. `Well, your precious woman'll be out on the 'eadland now with some other pretty boy, I shouldn't wonder.' He made an obscene gesture. `Let's 'ope she finds the time to be proud of you!'
Ferguson staggered to his feet, his eyes wide with a kind of madness. 'I'll kill you for that!'
He swung his fist, but Allday caught his wrist in mid-air. `Save it!' Allday glared at Pochin's grinning face. `His wife is sick, Pochin! Give him some rest!'
Old Ben Strachan said vaguely, `I 'ad a wife once.' He scratched his shaggy,grey head. `Blessed if I can remember 'er name now!'
Some of the men laughed, and Allday hissed fiercely, `Get a grip, Bryan! You can't beat men like Pochin. He envies you, that's all!'
Ferguson hardly heard the friendly warning in Allday's voice. Pochin's goading tone had opened the misery in his heart with renewed force, so that he could see his wife propped in her bed by the window as clearly as if he had just entered the room. That day, when the press gang had pushed him down the hillside, she would have been sitting there, waiting for his return. Now he was never going back. Would never see her again.
He staggered to his feet and threw the plate of meat down on the deck. 'I can't!' He was screaming. 'I won't!'
A horse-faced fo'c's'leman named Betts jumped to his feet as if shaken from a deep sleep. `Don't jeer at 'im, mates!' He stood swaying below one of the lanterns. `He's 'ad enough for a bit.'
Pochin groaned. `Lord save us!' He rolled his eyes in mock concern.
Betts snarled, `Jesus Christ! What do you have to suffer before you understand? This man is sick with fear for his wife, and others here have equal troubles. Yet all some of you can do is scoff at 'em!'
Allday shifted in his seat. Ferguson 's sudden despair had touched some hidden spring in the men's emotions. Weeks, and in some cases years at sea without ever putting a foot on dry land were beginning to take a cruel toll. But this was dangerous and blind. He held up his hand and said calmly, `Easy, lads. Easy.'
Betts glared down at him,- his salt-reddened eyes only half focusing on Allday's face. `How can you interfere?' His voice was slurred. `We live like animals, on food that was rotten even afore it was put in casks!' He pulled his knife from his belt and drove it into the table. `While those pigs down aft live like kings!' He peered round for support. `Well, ain't I right? That bastard Evans is as sleek as a churchyard rat on what he stole from our food!'
`Well, now. Did I hear my name mentioned?'
The berth deck froze into silence as Evans, the purser, moved into a patch of lamplight.
With his long coat buttoned to his throat and his hair pulled back severely above his narrow face he looked for all the world like a ferret on the attack. He put his head on one side. `Well, I'm waiting!'
Allday watched him narrowly. There was something evil and frightening about the little Welsh purser. All the more so because any one of the men grouped around him could have ended his life with a single blow.
Then Evans' eye fell on the meat beside the table. He
sucked his teeth and asked sadly, `And who did this, then?' No one spoke, and once more the angry roar of the sea and
wind enclosed the staggering berth deck with noise.
Ferguson looked up, his eyes bright and feverish. `I did it.' Evans leaned his narrow shoulders against the massive trunk of the foremast which ran right through both decks and said, ` "I did it, sir." '
Ferguson mumbled something and then added, `I am sorry, sir:
Allday said coldly, `It was an accident, Mr. Evans. Just an accident.'
`Food is food.' Evans' Welsh accent became more pronounced as his face became angrier. `I cannot hope to keep you men in good health if you waste such excellent meat, now can I?'
Those grouped around the table stared down at the shapeless hunk of rancid beef as it lay gleaming in a patch of
lamplight.
Evans added sharply, `Now, you, whatever your bloody name is, eat it!' -
Ferguson stared down at the meat, his mind swimming in nausea. The deck was discoloured with water and stained with droppings from the tilting table. There was vomit too, perhaps his own.
Evans said gently, `I am waiting, boyo. One more minute and I'll take you aft. A touch of the cat might teach you some appreciation!'
Ferguson dropped to his knees and picked up the meat. As he lifted it to his mouth Betts pushed forward and tore it from his hands and threw it straight at Evans. `Take it yourself, you bloody devil! Leave him alone!'
For a moment Evans showed the fear in his dark eyes. The men had crowded around him, their bodies rising and falling like a human tide with each roll of the ship. He could feel the menace, the sudden ice touch of terror.
Another voice cut through the shadows. `Stand aside!' Midshipman Farquhar had to stoop beneath the low beams, but his eyes were steady and bright as they settled on the frozen tableau around the end table. Farquhar's approach had been so stealthy and quiet that not even the men at the opposite end of the deck had noticed him. He snapped, 'I am waiting. What is going on here?'
Evans thrust the nearest men aside and threw himself to Farquhar's side. With his hand shaking in both fear and fury he pointed at Betts. `He struck me! Me, a warrant officer!'
Farquhar was expressionless. His tight lips and cold stare might have meant either amusement or anger. `Very well, Mr. Evans. Kindly lay aft for the master-at-arms.'
As the purser scurried away Farquhar looked round the circle of faces with open contempt. `You never seem to learn, do you?' He turned to Betts, who still stood staring at the meat, his chest heaving as if from tremendous exertion. `You are a fool, Betts! Now you will pay for it!'
Allday pressed his shoulders against the frigate's cold, wet timbers and closed his eyes. It was all happening just as he knew it would. He listened to Betts' uneven breathing and Ferguson 's quiet whimpers and felt sick. Pie thought suddenly of the quiet hillsides and the grey bunches of sheep. The space and the solitude.
Then Farquhar barked, `Take him away, Mr. Thain.'
The master-at-arms pushed Betts towards the hatch ladder adding softly, `Not a single flogging since we left Falmouth. I knew such gentleness was a bad mistake!'
Richard Bolitho leaned his palms on the sill of one of the big stem.-windows and stared out along the ship's frothing wake. Although the cabin itself was already in semi-darkness as the frigate followed the sun towards the horizon, the sea still looked alive, with only a hint of purple as a warning of the approaching night.
Reflected in the salt-speckled glass he could see Vibart's tall shape in the centre of the cabin, his face shadowed beneath the corkscrewing lantern, and behind him against the screen the slim figure of Midshipman Farquhar.
It took most of his self-control to keep himself immobile and calm as he considered what Farquhar had burst in to tell him. Bolitho had been going through the ship's books again trying to draw out Vibart's wooden reserve, to feel his way into the man's mind.
Like everything else during the past twenty days, it had been a hard and seemingly fruitless task. Vibart was too careful to show his hostility in the open and confined himself to short, empty answers, as if he hoarded his. knowledge of the ship and her company like a personal possession.
Then Farquhar had entered the cabin with this story of Betts' assault on the purser. It was just one more thing to distract his thoughts from what lay ahead, from the real task of working the frigate into a single fighting unit.
He made himself turn and face the two officers.
'Sentry! Pass the word for Mr. Evans!' He heard the cry passed along the passageway and then added, 'It seems to me as if this seaman was provoked.'
Vibart swayed with the ship, his eyes fixed on a point above the captain's shoulder. He said thickly, 'Betts is no recruit, sir. He knew what he was doing!'
Bolitho turned to watch the open, empty sea. If only this
had not happened just yet, he thought bitterly. A few more days and the damp, wind-buffeted ship would be in the sun, where men soon learned to forget their surroundings and started to look outboard instead of watching each other.
He listened to the hiss and gurgle of water around the rudder, the distant clank of pumps as the duty watch dealt with the inevitable seepage into the bilges. He felt tired and strained to the limit. From the moment the Phalarope had weighed anchor he had not spared himself or his efforts to maintain his hold over the ship. He had made a point of speaking to most of the new men, and of establishing contact with the regular crew. He had watched his officers, and had driven the ship to her utmost. It should have been a proud moment for him. The frigate handled well, lively and ready to respond to helm and sail like a thoroughbred.